Trial begins for man accused of rape, murder

Sunday

Jul 27, 2008 at 12:01 AMJul 27, 2008 at 8:53 AM

Jury hears gruesome outline of torture and death in capital murder trial of Richard Davis.

Michael Glover - michael.glover@examiner.net

Lorie Dunfield got a call from a man who called himself “Dave.” He got her number from a friend. They agreed to meet. Dave picked Dunfield up and drove to Wendy’s, where they bought some food. They drove back to his apartment.

Dave wanted her to hook him up with women for sex. After lunch, they went into Dave’s bedroom and watched a video of him and two women engaging in a threesome. He asked her if she wanted to be involved in a threesome with him and another girl.

Dave told Dunfield he wanted to have another threesome, this time with violence against women. Strangling. Domination. Death. That sort of thing. Dunfield got scared and left.

About three months later, in May 2006, Dave fulfilled that fantasy when he and his girlfriend, Dena Riley, killed Marsha Spicer by suffocating and strangling, and buried her body in a wooded area in Lafayette County, according to Jackson County prosecutors.

Dave was later identified as Richard D. Davis, prosecutors said.

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The prosecution and public defense lawyers gave opening statements Friday on the first day of the capital murder case against Davis.

Prosecutors told the jury a story of brutal rape and murder of 41-year-old Spicer.

This is what happened, according to the prosecution:

Spicer tried to leave Davis’s apartment when he wanted her to perform sexual acts on Riley. She wasn’t into women. But Davis prevented her from leaving.

Then, Riley and Davis beat her up, bound her arms behind her back, duct taped her eyes and mouth shut. Davis repeatedly raped her while Riley sat on her face, smothering her until she stopped kicking her legs.

They dumped her body in the bath tub. Davis filled the tub with about 9 inches of water. He doused the body with bleach because he heard bleach destroys DNA.

After the two returned from a graduation party, they decided to get rid of the body. He drained the tub and wrapped Spicer in a plastic tarp.

They put her in the trunk of his Toyota Corolla. They drove to a rural area near the intersection of routes FF and DD in Lafayette County, about 15 miles from Bates City. Davis knew the area because he fished there decades ago.

Davis placed Spicer’s nude body in a 2- to 3-foot-deep hand-dug hole in a heavily wooded spot near Sni-A-Bar Creek, according to prosecutors.

On May 16, 2006, a Bates City man who was fishing the creek discovered the body. An autopsy was done that concluded Spicer’s death was a homicide.

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Authorities showed up several days later at Davis’s apartment on Truman Road in Independence. They got his name after Dunfield told police about the contact she had with “Dave” months earlier.

Davis denied knowing Spicer. During the discussion at his apartment, Independence police noticed a video tape recorder set up in the bedroom. That set off red flags because police had been briefed about videotaped sex acts.

Police applied for a search warrant. A judge signed off.

Authorities found two videotapes, one on a TV stand and the other in a bag. They viewed the tapes.

It showed the gruesome violence against Spicer. The second tape, which had been taped in April, showed another brutal sex scene involving Davis and Riley toward a woman later identified as Michelle Ricci.

Police collected other items like gloves, pieces of duct tape and wire at his apartment.

Meanwhile, Davis and Riley left the apartment. They left the area in a truck they borrowed from a friend. Charges were filed and a nationwide manhunt ensued.

Davis called 911 after he wrecked a different truck he borrowed from another friend. The accident happened on a rural road in Barton County in southwest Missouri. The sheriff of Barton County responded and arrested Riley and Davis.

After Davis was released from the hospital, he confessed to the crimes during an interrogation the last week of May 2006 with Independence police, prosecutors said.

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Thomas Jacquinot, a public defender representing Davis, said they’re not going to dispute the prosecution’s physical evidence like the tape and DNA.

“Nobody is going to come here and say that these things didn’t happen,” Jacquinot said.

He said Davis’s fantasies “got darker and criminal.” Davis was stressed out, and threesomes relieved the stress.

Jacquinot said Davis voluntarily led authorities to Spicer’s grave and evidence he discarded during the crime. He also confessed to the crimes and to four additional sex tapes that showed the acts with Spicer and Ricci.

But the legal definition of Davis’s intent may not be clear, Jacquinot said.

During the all-day trial Friday, the jury heard testimony from the fisherman who found the body, the former Bates City police chief and an investigator from the Lafayette County Sheriff’s Department, a forensic pathologist who performed Spicer’s autopsy, an Independence police captain and Lorie Dunfield.

The trial was to resume Saturday morning.

Davis is to be tried separately in Clay County in connection with Ricci’s death, because it was determined that is where she was killed.